Oh, Curses! Last October, long after the Cubs have usually begun
their annual hibernation, they held on to the Central Division lead
and growled Bravely past Atlanta to go fishing for Marlins in the
NL Championship Series. Simultaneously, fulfillment of the fantasies
of Red Sox faithful, some in the fifth generation since their ancestors'
hopes had been realized, seemed possible. Pedro would pitch a seventh
game, certainly propelling the Sox to the real Series. A replay
of 1918 hovered as baseball's two cosmic curses seemed to
converge: Boston's suffering since the departure of the Bambino,
and the Cubs looking for a Scapegoat for their failures since '45.
In the 1918 World Series the Red Sox had beaten the Cubs, ushering
in the end of the war to end all wars. Now, the prospect of the
Cubs and Sox—the red ones—meeting in the Series in the
new millennium generated similar cosmic conflicts: The search for
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq must be the fuse for Armageddon:
The end of the world must be at hand, and the perfect kingdom must
be near.

The Cubs, of course, have not appeared in a World Series since the
hurling of the curse of the Billy Goat by the high priest of Cubs'
fans in 1945. Then, Billy Sianis, owner of the Billy Goat Tavern,
an official watering hole for bleacher bums and sports writers,
was forbidden from bringing his pet Billy goat named Murphy into
Wrigley Field by a seat usher or, or according to other accounts,
by P.K. Wrigley himself. The ticket that Sianis sought to use for
Murphy was Box 65, Tier 12, Seat 5. Whatever the case, Murphy was
denied entry because the animal's smell could not be masked
even by Doublemint. Kicking mad, it is said, Sianis cursed: “No
Billy goat in the Friendly Confines?! Then there will never be never
be a World Series played at Wrigley Field again.” And so it
has been for lo these six decades.

For the Red Sox, the curse of the Bambino has proven even more tantalizing
since it has prevented their winning a Series every year since their
early September victory over the hapless Cubs in 1918. The sale
of Ruth to Jacob Ruppert and the Yankees by Red Sox owner Harry
Frazee in 1920 has been called “baseball's Original
Sin” [by John Spalding] since Frazee himself had yielded to
the temptation of the Big Apple. He wanted to transfer the paradise
of Fenway to Broadway to produce a musical that just said “No,”
to Nanette, twice, in fact.

For decades, Red Sox devotees have sought to determine the precise
origin of the curse of the Bambino. What is for sure is that in
the half dozen years before the Babe's departure from Beantown,
the Red Sox had won the World Series on average every other year.
And Babe carried that success with him to New York, helping the
Yankees to climb Jacob's ladder to the top of the American
League.

Last year, the wisdom of Yankees prophet Yogi once again prevailed
during baseball's high holy days: the games in October weren't
over until they were over. The games weren't over even when
fat ladies started to cackle on the corner of Clarke and Addison
one night, followed shortly thereafter by a soprano chorus going
coloraturo on the prematurely painted World Series logo on the grounds
at Fenway. No, the late innings' curse for the Cubs prevailed
again, with Bartman robbin' Moses of a fair catch of a foul
ball, followed in the Big Apple by Pedro mimicking the late-inning
limp of Buckner. Moses would not get a chance to part the Red Sox.

The Character of Curses and Their Function in Baseball

Curses live, not because they are empirically powerful but because
they are believed by influential individuals who inspire communities
to accept their attitudes and actions. Curses derive their power
from a spiritual sensibility that is often denigrated by opponents
as relying on superstition. Yet the religious underpinnings of cursing
recur throughout religious traditions across centuries, continents,
and cultures. In religious terms, curses are “closely related
to blessing” in the sense that the same people usually are
empowered to do both and that the forms of curses and blessings
are similar. In other words, religious leaders are the ones empowered
to do both since some religious traditions consider curses uttered
by unauthorized pretenders to be “magical or sacrilegious.”
Specifically, gods, priests, shamans, and other spiritual leaders
who have gained prominence through advanced age or public suffering
exercise legitimate power to invoke “misfortune, including
death or destruction, upon people or things” (Little, 182).

The religious power of curses also draws upon their character
as speech acts: When delivered by a properly recognized authority,
curses perform the act that they prescribe. In ancient
Semitic languages, for instance, curses were thought to contain
and convey the power of the act that they signified. Utterance enacted.
Thus, the person at whom a curse was hurled would actually, physically
duck, so that the curse would fly over his or her head.

Another distinct characteristic of curses is their function: They
can serve to harass enemies or combatants, to enforce law or tradition,
to demand doctrinal or moral conformity, and to protect sacred sites
and relics (Little, 182). In dealing with enemies, one technique
of curses is to paralyze opponents by causing dissent, or to destroy
them by separating them from their source of energy and power. Curses
are also used to teach a lesson about the need for moral action,
as Moses did in demanding the freedom of his kinsmen and as Jesus
did in cursing the tree that provided no shade. Although curses
often declaim destruction, they frequently function as “instruments
of negotiation,” as suggested by Moses' success. (But
in baseball the duration of the Cubs and Red Sox failure makes one
wonder what they must be negotiating or, at the very least, who
their agents might be!) As another distinct set of curses, protective
ones often seek sanction for sites associated with the deceased,
to respect their place of death or to secure the memorial of their
burial.

In baseball, curses tend to conform to the first and last of these
categories—either dealing with opponents, as the curse of
the Bambino is intended to execute, or protecting sacred sites,
as the curses against the Cubs and Angels were thought to be directed.
Because Anaheim Stadium was thought to have been built on a Native
American burial ground, former owner Gene Autry and other team executives
believed that the failure of the Angels to win was based on a protective
curse initiated by Native Americans.

Another indication of the religious power of curses is the manner
of their possible annulment: The rituals for their removal also
engage spiritual leaders who, it is thought, have the power to deliver
curses. In this regard a number of ceremonial attempts to abrogate
or merely dull the power of curses have been undertaken by faithful
devotees to the Major League teams. Take first the Angels, since
they have now played in and won a Series, a feat denied the Cubs
and Red Sox for most of the past century. Gene Autry, that singing
cowboy, hired a tribal shaman several years ago to perform a ritual
to remove the curse. But during the Cowboy's lifetime, it
didn't make a Donnie Moore of difference. The Angels never
made it to the Series while the Autrys owned the team. Following
Gene's death, Mrs. Autry even considered interring his ashes
beneath home plate, thereby respecting the Native American use of
the site. Instead, the reversal of the Angels' destiny took
the miracle of Mickey Mouse to turn the Big A's burial ground
into Fantasyland, to make the Angels' dreams come true, and
to “ever let [them] hold [their] banner high.”

In somewhat different ways, the Red Sox diaconate has also attempted
to reverse the curse of the Bambino. The Sox have “tried everything
from sage-burning ceremonies to an exorcism at Fenway Park performed
by … Father Guido Sarducci of ‘Saturday Night Live'”
(Spalding). Little did the Red Sox realize that they probably needed
a tragic Catholic priest from the Sopranos more than the comic antics
of Fr. Guido. More amazing still than these two attempts to exonerate
the Red Sox, however, are ones involving the heights of Mt. Everest
and the depths of Willis Pond in Sudbury, Massachusetts. One Red
Sox penitent reports that “he traveled to Nepal to ask a lama,
renowned for his powers, to lift the curse. The lama told him to
climb Mount Everest and to place at the summit a Red Sox cap, which
the lama had blessed. He was then to return to base camp and burn
a Yankees cap as an offering” (Spalding). The Red Sox devotee
accomplished the fantastic feat, only to see the Red Sox end the
season by blowing their first place lead.

Or consider the efforts of Red Sox novitiates in February 2002.
Because the precise origin of the curse of the Bambino is not known,
scholars of the pseudopigraphal Gospel According to Fenway have
surmised that the curse might have begun before the Ruthian sale.
An apocryphal story holds, for instance, that following the Series
against the Cubs in 1918, the last year that we have read of Sox
post-season success, Ruth rented a cottage adjacent to Willis Pond,
and then baptized his piano by pushing it in after a night of partying.
Anticipating the diamond anniversary of this Ruthian immersion,
a five person scuba team braved the icy pond waters in February
to retrieve the instrument so that the Red Sox could play a winning
tune again. Alas, the water was so murky that they only discovered
a sunken lawn chair. Not fully discouraged, they returned later
with sonar equipment to sound the depths, again, but like the Sox
October play, to no avail.

In Chicago throughout the past half-century, various attempts have
been made to expunge the curse of the Billy Goat. Yet like those
related to the desire to reverse Ruth's curse, the Cubs'
attempts have also failed. By mid-century, P.K. had wriggled his
way into correspondence with Sianis, beseeching him to define the
necessary penance and lift the curse. But the Tavern owner replied
simply: Forget it. Besides, Sianis said, Murphy had already died
of a broken heart.

Almost two decades after Wrigley's rebuff, St. Leo (Durocher)
led the Cubs to a nine-game August lead in 1969. Finally, Sianis
consented to lift the curse—only to discover that the Mets,
not the Cubs, were destined to drink that year from the miraculous
trough at Lourdes. And the next year, the goat of cursers, Sianis
himself, died, sans Cubbie lamentations. Within three years,
however, the curse officially returned when Billy's nephew
Sam attempted to take Socrates, the Tavern's new mascot, to
Wrigley Field for a mid-summer game while the Cubs led the division
by seven lucky games. But apparently fearing that hemlock might
displace ivy, the Cubs methodically denied Socrates and Sam revived
the curse of the Billy Goat. Since then, however, Socrates has been
invited to graze outfield near the walls of ivy on Opening Day in
'82 and to open the League Championship Series against the
Padres in '84. His sowing of wild oats that afternoon was
effective as the Cubs pounded five homeruns and won, by an unlucky
score of 13 to zip. But failing to fly to San Diego, Socrates went
platonic, as did the Cubs, who lost their mission with the Padres
(Dravecky, 93).

Circumventing appeals to the Sianis family to reverse the curse, other
efforts have been made for the Cubs to make it to the Series. For one,
the Cubs themselves have made on-field efforts to improve their play and
overcome their full fall futility. About the time that Billy Sianis died,
they acquired an all-star first baseman only to find that instead of overcoming
the curse of the goat he was becoming a hobbled Billy (Buckner) in such
a way to make himself a goat for the Red Sox. In a more comprehensive
effort, in the spring of 2004 the Illinois legislature passed an official
resolution that the “Cubs' Curse shall be no more.”
And earlier in the winter of 2004, Cubs fans, like the February divers
in Massachusetts, turned from the symbolic elements within the curse itself
to more practical, ritual means of annulling the curse's power.
At Harry Caray's sports bar in Chicago, the Bartman ball was subjected
to cursing by the supplicant Cubs. In December 2003, Grant DePorter, Managing
Partner of the restaurant, purchased the ball at Internet auction for
the tidy sum of $113,824.16. For two months the ball was displayed inside
a case protected by 13 surveillance cameras, two anti-theft alarms, and
security guards on duty around the clock. During the ball's exhibition,
almost 30,000 fans cursed it, suggesting ways for it to fulfill its destiny—destruction:
Among their demands, “roast it, incinerate it, crush it, drown it,
drop it into a bucket of acid, split it in two with an ax, put it in front
of a firing squad, launch it into outer space, shove it into a shredder,
scatter its remains at sea, even freeze it in liquid nitrogen and shatter
it into a million pieces” (Huffstutter, A20). DePorter himself remarked,
“This ball is baseball's anti-trophy. I had a pit in my stomach,
for sure” he confessed, “because it was so expensive. But
what would happen if we didn't destroy it and some Marlins fan got
ahold of it? What if someone used it to psych out the Cubs next year?
No, it's got to go,” he concluded.

And it did. On Thursday evening, February 26, 2004, at a street
party in Chicago, much of the nation, joined by bar patrons in 50
countries throughout the world, watched a live telecast on MSNBC
as the Bartman ball was exploded by Michael Lantieri. A life-long
Cubs fan, Lantieri had been the mechanical effects supervisor for
the “Jurassic Park” film, and with the assistance of
Rawlings sporting goods, he had practiced destruction on similar
baseballs by various means. One person who did not attend the party
was Steve Bartman himself, since he had suffered death threats like
those directed to the ball itself.

The Culture of Curses

Curses in baseball derive their power not from the utterance itself,
nor from the prestige or notoriety of the performer, but from an
underlying culture of superstition. Beyond baseball, superstitions
are often identified as folk beliefs that contradict reason and
appeal to magic while the established beliefs of a culture are accepted
as true religion (O'Neil 163). The affirmation of a real presence
of Christ in the Eucharist, for instance, might contradict reason
as much as the acceptance of telepathic forms of faith healing celebrated
by shamans. But the dominant Christian culture identifies the dogma
of real presence as orthodox belief and a matter of faith, while
it decries as mere superstition structurally similar beliefs associated
with shamanistic acts. In other words, “superstition”
is a pejorative label attached to beliefs that are not accepted
within the dominant religious tradition.

Related to baseball, several years ago a major feature in Sports
Illustrated focused on the culture of superstition in sports,
and it suggested that “superstition envelops [baseball] like
a shroud.” Among baseball's fervently held superstitions,
for instance, are the beliefs that “it's bad luck for
a pitcher to strike out the first batter” or for a pitcher
to catch a ball thrown by the second baseman between plays. Other
rules apply in areas beyond the reach of umpires: “Don't
cross bats. Don't wash your uniform or change your sanitary
socks during a winning streak. Step over the baseline, not on it”
(Jack McCallum, 89).

Some superstitions, of course, are “endemic to baseball”
while others have been adapted from various childhood games and
religious practices throughout the history. For example, says McCallum,
“Stepping over the foul line is no doubt an offshoot of the
old childhood superstition that says, Step on a crack, break your
mother's back. That superstition, incidentally, can be traced
to the belief that a crack represented the opening of a grave, and
to step on that crack meant that you might be walking on the grave
of someone in your family” (McCallum, 89). Even the childhood
crack-hopping game is derived from religious attitudes about death.
Somewhat similarly, the ritual of not washing articles of clothes
during a winning streak is connected to the idea that both banes
and blessings might be washed away by the cleansing power of water.
Several years ago, on-field opponents and even fans of the Salt
Lake City Trappers were olfactorily relieved when the Trappers,
who had practiced the no-wash rule, lost a game after a professional
record 29 wins in a row.

“For the athlete, superstitions are a crutch, a secret weapon,
a way to get a little edge” (McCallum, 88). In this regard,
former Yankees pitcher Lefty O'Doul commented on his practice
of stepping over the baseline: “It's not that if I stepped
on the foul line I would really lose the game, but why take a chance”
(quoted in Dravecky, 19). Even saintly Christy Mathewson wrote in
his 1912 book Pitching in a Pinch that a jinx or curse
can “make a bad pitcher out of a good one and a blind batter
out of a three hundred hitter” (quoted in McCallum, 89). After
going hitless in a game some years ago, White Sox outfielder Minnie
Minoso figured that his bad luck resulted from his uniform. So still
in cleats, he showered with it on. The next day after he got three
hits, eight of his teammates joined him fully clothed in the shower.
Yet as much as athletes might “indulge their superstitions,”
they avoid calling their actions and attitudes superstitious. Some
think of them as habits, even the detailed, timed pre-game ritual
of Wade Boggs, who cycled repeatedly through a dozen recipes so
that he could eat chicken before each game. He also practiced a
five-hour routine that determined actions at certain times and places,
including the time that he'd leave his home for night games,
the length of time that he'd sit in front of his locker, and
his running of wind sprints at 7:17. In addition, he made sure that
as he finished taking grounders in infield practice, he'd
leave the field by stepping on third, second, and first, in that
order, followed by taking two steps in the coach's box and
loping in four strides to the dugout. Not superstition, he said,
merely habit. Or consider the categorical, paradoxical dismissal
of superstition by former Mets manager Bobby Valentine. Following
Shawn Estes's loss of a no-hitter after the Shea Stadium scoreboard
flashed the notice of his quest, Valentine was asked whether Estes
had been jinxed by the Jumbo-Tron's insensitivity to the norm
of not mentioning a no-hitter in progress. “I don't
believe in superstitions,” Valentine remarked. “They're
bad luck” (Dravecky, 23).

Rejecting superstitions because of his faith in God rather than
faith in luck, former pitcher Dave Dravecky is an evangelical Christian
perhaps best known for making a comeback from cancer, then breaking
his arm, ending his career and requiring pitching-arm amputation.
Although he took no part in superstitious behavior, as he puts it,
he had a routine of stepping off the mound, rubbing the ball with
both hands, kicking the pitching rubber, and peering home to get
the sign from his catcher. His purpose in going through the same
motions, pitch after pitch, he said, had nothing to do with superstition.
Instead, his series of actions was a ritual, he said. For rituals,
the orthodox affirm, give players “a sense of control and
stability in an unstable environment” while superstitions
appeal to luck (Dravecky, 22). The distinction between superstitious
behavior and ritual, however, is akin to that between superstition
and “true belief.” Orthodox believers pejoratively apply
the label of superstition to empowering rituals practiced by those
whom they call agnostics, atheists, and apostates. But in baseball's
superstitious culture, the bad luck of a batting slump or losing
streak is not credited to the lack of personal self-control or the
failure to execute a play; instead, it is identified with the inability
to perform rituals properly.

Conclusion:

In baseball, the culture of curses thrives because of the larger
system of superstitions from which it draws its energy and support.
Belief in curses identifies a cosmic cause for failure, thus absolving
players for their ineptitude and fans for their lack of faith or
dutiful support. Belief in curses also cuts the sainted players
some slack: Although Johnny Blanchard, a third-string catcher for
a Yankee dynasty, earned almost a fist-full of championship rings,
neither Ted Williams nor Carl Yastrzemski ever won a World Series
ring, while neither Ernie Banks nor Ron Santo ever even came to
bat in a post-season game. The curse means that receiving just rewards
is not the issue, because it's not Ted Williams's or
Ernie Banks's fault that their teams never prevailed. Rather,
it's a force of the demonic, of a consequence of a curse.

In the spirit of the Billy Goat and the Bambino, curses have been
conjured against the Cubs and the Red Sox, and with supplication
faithful devotees of both teams have sought the spirits' annulment
of the hexes.

Following the detonation of the Bartman ball during Spring Training,
the Cubs will have no one to blame this year, although I would have
preferred that they feed the shards of the obliterated ball to the
Billy goats at Lincoln Park Zoo near Wrigley Field. Nonetheless,
as a theologian and a Cubs fan, I'm still a bit wary about
this season because this year Sports Illustrated's
annual baseball preview featured Kerry Wood on its cover and ran
the lead story: “Hell Freezes Over. The Cubs will win the
Series this year.” Here's hoping the cover curse of
Sports Illustrated doesn't become a scapegoat for
Cubs futility if Hell remains Chicago hot again this summer.

References:

Dravecky, Dave, and Mike Yorkey. Called Up: Stories of Life
and Faith from the Great Game of Baseball. Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
2004.

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